M&A is often treated as a shortcut to growth.

In reality, it’s one of the fastest ways to slow a company down particularly when the core business is scaling.

‍Shiv Narayanan kindly invited me to the How To SaaS podcast to discuss the ways Copilot supports software founders (https://lnkd.in/emsj_um7).

We spent a lot of time on one question we regularly get from founders:

“When does M&A actually help — and when does it just add complexity?”

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Here’s the framework I shared:

1) M&A isn’t a magic lever. If your GTM motion and ICP aren’t clear yet, acquisitions don’t accelerate growth but distract from it.

2) The safest M&A at the 50→200 employee stage is often “customer-book” deals. Buying a sub-scale competitor, migrating customers onto your stronger product, and taking out cost without adding product complexity is often the highest-probability path.

3) Avoid early product acquisitions. This is how you end up with a “Frankenstack”: fragmented tech, slower velocity, and management bandwidth drained by integration.

4) Integration is everything. Bring Sales + Customer Success in before the deal, be explicit about migration, and treat integration like an operating plan, not a board-level assumption.

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If you’re a founder considering M&A, the key question we start with is:

“Is this deal helping us stay focused on the core business or distracting us from it?”

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If you listen, I’d love your take on using M&A as a successful growth lever.